Pattern Energy's wind-powered transmission project breaks ground
San Francisco's Pattern Energy has broken ground on a $10 billion renewable energy project quoted as being "bigger than the Hoover Dam"—a planned transmission line slanting 550 miles from New Mexico to California that will reportedly be powered by wind turbines. If completed as planned, it would be the largest renewable energy infrastructure project in the history of the United States.
Ahead of the groundbreaking ceremony for the SunZia Wind and Transmission project on September 1, Pattern Energy CEO Hunter Armistead was interviewed exclusively by Susan Montoya Bryan of The Associated Press to offer his views on the project’s importance to the United States and beyond.
Referencing the large-scale investments in transmission infrastructure in Europe and China, the article quotes Armistead as saying, “They all recognize the need to build out bulk transmission, to create inter-regional transfer points in order to create greater reliability . . . It also creates diversity in resources and diversity in dealing with weather, which is now the new most important factor driving both our load and our generation.”
SunZia Transmission is a 550-mile ± 525 kV high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission line between central New Mexico and south-central Arizona with the capacity to transport 3,000 MW of clean, reliable, and affordable electricity across Western states. SunZia will deliver clean power from Pattern’s SunZia Wind project, the largest wind project in the Western Hemisphere, which will be simultaneously constructed with SunZia Transmission. Together, SunZia Wind and SunZia Transmission are the largest clean energy infrastructure project in U.S. history.
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